Drug torment behind Nicole Kidman's new role

HOLLYWOOD star Nicole Kidman has revealed the torment of her rock star husband’s drug addiction helped shape her performance as the wife of a Scot forced by the Japanese to work on Burma’s Death Railway.

The Australian actress, married to country rocker Keith Urban, spoke of an emotional meeting at the Berwick-on-Tweed home of Patti Lomax, whose Second World War signals officer husband Eric’s moving story has become blockbuster film The Railway Man.

“That’s the thread Patti and I share,” said Kidman, 46. “Obviously in very different situations, but I connected to her.”

Co-starring Mr Darcy heartthrob Colin Firth as Lomax, the film charts the couple’s first post-war meeting on a train and subsequent marriage torn by the husband’s rages and nightmares stemming from his ­barbaric treatment in Burma.

The mother-of-two believes that 45-year-old Urban’s own cocaine and drink demons – finally cured at the Betty Ford Clinic four months after he and Kidman married – proved for both women that love can heal even the deepest emotional wounds.

“I’d never had the chance to play a woman who gets to stand by her husband through very difficult times,” Kidman said. “And it’s something I feel very strongly about and have done in my own personal life. I do believe there’s a way in which love can heal, by just gently encouraging someone to confront things, and I wanted to do that on screen."

I do believe there’s a way in which love can heal, by just gently encouraging someone to confront things, and I wanted to do that on screen

Nicole Kidman

Speaking before the premiere at the Toronto Film Festival this month, she said: “People don’t fall in love, or really find deep love, when everything is good. When you really find it is when you have to go through pain together. And if you choose to stay together you really find something much deeper.”

The film is shot partly in Edinburgh – Eric Lomax’s home town – and on the Bo’ness and Kinneil railway, as well as Perth.

Only during filming near Patti’s home was a meeting finally arranged between the two women.

Kidman explained: “I just felt nervous to meet her.

“So it was actually the perfect way because we were shooting in her town and we drove to their house and sat in the living room. We talked and there were tears and laughter and a connection and it felt very pure.”